Strong Poison

  “An actress, was she?”

  “And a very beautiful one, they say, though I can’t rightly recollect what her stage name was,” mused Mrs. Pettican. “It was a queer one, I know—’Yde Park, or somethink of that. This Wrayburn as she married, ’e was nobody—jest to kiver up the scandal, that’s what he married ’im for. Two children she ’ad—but ’ose I would not take it upon me to say—and they both died in the cholera, which no doubt it was a judgment.”

  “That’s not what Mr. Boyes called it,” said Hannah, with a self-righteous sniff. “The devil took care of his own, that was his way of putting it.”

  “Ah! he talked careless,” said Mrs. Pettican, “and no wonder, seeing the folks he lived with. But he’d a sobered down in time if he’d bin spared. A very pleasant way he ’ad with ’im when ’e liked. Come in here, he would, and chat upon one thing and another, very amusing-like.”

  “You’re too soft with the gentlemen, Mrs. Pettican,” said Hannah. “Anyone as has taking ways and poor health is ewe-lambs to you.”

  “So Mr. Boyes knew all about Mrs. Wrayburn?”

  “Oh, yes—it was all in the family, you see, and no doubt Mr. Urquhart would ’a told him more than he’d say to us. Which train did Mr. Urquhart say he was a-comin’ by, Hannah?”

  “He said dinner for half-past seven. That’ll be the six-thirty, I should think.”

  Mrs. Pettican glanced at the clock and Bunter, taking this as a hint, rose and made his farewells.

  “And I ’opes as you’ll come again, Mr. Bunter,” said the Cook, graciously. “The master makes no objections to respectable gentlemen visitors at tea-time. Wednesday is my ’arf-day.”

  “Mine is Friday,” added Hannah, “and every other Sunday. If you should be Evangelical, Mr. Bunter, the Rev. Crawford in Judd Street is a beautiful preacher. But maybe you’ll be going out of town for Christmas.”

  Mr. Bunter replied that the season would undoubtedly be spent at Duke’s Denver, and departed in a shining halo of vicarious splendour.

  Chapter X

  “HERE you are, Peter,” said Chief-Inspector Parker, “and here is the lady you are anxious to meet. Mrs. Bulfinch, allow me to introduce Lord Peter Wimsey.”

  “Pleased, I am sure,” said Mrs. Bulfinch. She giggled, and dabbed her large, blonde face with powder.

  “Mrs. Bulfinch, before her union with Mr. Bulfinch, was the life and soul of the saloon bar at the Nine Rings in Grays Inn Road,” said Mr. Parker, “and well known to all for her charm and wit.”

  “Go on,” said Mrs. Bulfinch, “you’re a one, aren’t you? Don’t you pay no attention to him, your lordship. You know what these police fellows are.”

  “Sad dogs,” said Wimsey, shaking his head. “But I don’t need his testimonials, I can trust my own eyes and ears, Mrs. Bulfinch, and I can only say that, if I had had the happiness to make your acquaintance before it was too late, it would have been my life-time’s ambition to wipe Mr. Bulfinch’s eye.”

  “You’re every bit as bad as he is,” said Mrs. Bulfinch, highly gratified, “and what Bulfinch would say to you I don’t know. Quite upset, he was, when the officer came round to ask me to pop along to the Yard. ‘I don’t like it, Gracie,’ he says, ‘we’ve always bin respectable in this house and no trouble with disorderlies nor drinks after hours, and once you get among them fellows you don’t know the things you may be asked.’ ‘Don’t be so soft,’ I tells him, ‘the boys all know me and they haven’t got nothing against me, and if it’s just to tell them about the gentleman that left the packet behind him at the Rings, I haven’t no objection to tell them, having nothing to reproach myself with. What’d they think,’ I said, ‘if I refused to go? Ten to one they’d think there was something funny about it.’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’m coming with you.’ ‘Oh, are you?’ I says, ‘and how about the new barman you was going to engage this morning? For,’ I said, ‘serve in the jug and bottle I will not, never having been accustomed to it, so you can do as you like.’ So I came away and left him to it. Mind you, I like him for it. I ain’t saying nothing against Bulfinch, but police or no police, I reckon I know how to take care of myself.”

  “Quite so,” said Parker, patiently. “Mr. Bulfinch need feel no alarm. All we want you to do is to tell us, to the best of your recollection, about that young man you spoke of and help us to find the white-paper packet. You may be able to save an innocent person from being convicted, and I am sure your husband could not object to that.”

  “Poor thing!” said Mrs. Bulfinch, “I’m sure when I read the account of the trial I said to Bulfinch—”

  “Just a moment. If you wouldn’t mind beginning at the beginning, Mrs. Bulfinch, Lord Peter would understand better what you have to tell us.”

  “Why, of course. Well, my lord, before I was married I was barmaid at the Nine Rings, as the Chief-Inspector says. Miss Montague I was then—it’s a better name than Bulfinch, and I was almost sorry to say good-bye to it, but there! a girl has to make a lot of sacrifices when she marries and one more or less is nothing to signify. I never worked there but in the saloon bar, for I wouldn’t undertake the four ale business, it not being a refined neighbourhood, though there’s a lot of very nice legal gentlemen drops in of an evening on the saloon side. Well, as I was saying, I was working there up to my marriage, which was last August Bank Holiday, and I remember one evening a gentleman coming in—”

  “Could you remember the date, do you think?”

  “Not within a day or so I couldn’t, for I wouldn’t wish to swear to a fib, but it wasn’t far off the longest day, for I remember making that same remark to the gentleman for something to say, you know.”

  “That’s near enough,” said Parker. “Round about June 20th, or 21st, or something like that?”

  “That’s right, as near as I can speak to it. And as to the time of night, that I can tell you—knowing how keen you ’tecs always are on the hands of the clock.” Mrs. Bulfinch giggled again and looked archly round for applause. “There was a gentleman sitting there—I didn’t know him, he was a stranger to the district—and he asked what was our closing hour and I told him 11 o’clock, and he said, ‘Thank God! I thought I was going to be turned out at 10.30,’ and I looked at the clock and said, ‘Oh, you’re all right, anyhow, sir; we always keep that clock a quarter of an hour fast.’ The clock said twenty past, so I know it must have been five past ten really. So we got talking a bit about these prohibitionists and the way they had been trying it on again to get our licensing-hour altered to half-past ten, only we had a good friend on the Bench in Mr. Judkins, and while we was discussing it, I remember so well, the door was pushed open hurried-like and a young gentleman comes in, almost falls in, I might say, and he calls, ‘Give me a double brandy, quick.’ Well, I didn’t like to serve him all at once, he looked so white and queer, I thought he’d had one or two over the eight already, and the boss was most particular about that sort of thing. Still, he spoke all right—quite clear and not repeating himself nor nothing, and his eyes, though they did look a bit funny, weren’t fixed-like, if you understand me. We get to size folks up pretty well in our business, you know. He sort of held on to the bar, all scrunched up together and bent double, and he says, ‘Make it a stiff one, there’s a good girl, I’m feeling awful bad.’ The gentleman I’d been talking to, he says to him, ‘Hold up,’ he says, ‘what’s the matter?’ and the gentleman says, ‘I’m going to be ill.’ And he puts his hands across his waistcoat like so!”

  Mrs. Bulfinch clasped her waist and rolled her big blue eyes dramatically.

  “Well, then I see he wasn’t drunk, so I mixed him a double Martell with just a splash of soda and he gulps it down, and says, ‘That’s better.’ And the other gentleman puts his arm round him and helps him to a seat. There was a good many other people in the bar, but they didn’t notice much, being full of the racing news. Presently the gentleman asks me for a glass of water, and I fetched it to him, and he says: ‘Sorry if I frightened you, but I’ve just h
ad a bad shock, and it must have gone to my inside. I’m subject to gastric trouble,’ he says, ‘and any worry or shock always affects my stomach. However,’ he says, ‘perhaps this will stop it.’ And he takes out a white paper packet with some powder in it, and drops it into the glass of water and stirs it up with a fountain-pen and drinks it off.”

  “Did it fizz or anything?” asked Wimsey.

  “No; it was just a plain powder, and it took a bit of a time to mix. He drank it off and said, ‘That settles it,’ or ‘That’ll settle it,’ or something of that sort. And then he says, ‘Thanks very much. I’m better now and I’d better get home in case it takes me again.’ And he raised his hat—he was quite the gentleman—and off he goes.”

  “How much powder do you think he put in?”

  “Oh, a good dollop. He didn’t measure it or anything, just shot it in out of the packet. Near a dessert spoonful it might have been.”

  “And what happened to the packet?” prompted Parker.

  “Ah, there you are.” Mrs. Bulfinch took a glance at Wimsey’s face and seemed pleased with the effect she was producing.

  “We’d just got the last customer out—about five past eleven, that would be, and George was locking the door, when I see something white on the seat. Somebody’s handkerchief I thought it was, but when I picked it up, I see it was the paper packet. So I said to George, ‘Hullo! the gentleman’s left his medicine behind him.’ So George asked what gentleman, and I told him, and he said, ‘What is it?’ and I looked, but the label had been torn off. It was just one of them chemist’s packets, you know, with the ends turned up and the label stuck across, but there wasn’t a bit of the label left.”

  “You couldn’t even see whether it had been printed in black or in red?”

  “Well, now.” Mrs. Bulfinch considered. “Well, no, I couldn’t say that. Now you mention it, I do seem to recollect that there was something red about the packet, somewhere, but I can’t clearly call it to mind. I wouldn’t swear. I know there wasn’t any name or printing of any kind, because I looked to see what it was.”

  “You didn’t try tasting it, I suppose?”

  “Not me. It might have been poison or something. I tell you, he was a funny looking customer.” Parker and Wimsey exchanged glances.

  “Was that what you thought at the time?” enquired Wimsey, “or did it only occur to you later on—after you’d read about the case, you know?”

  “I thought it at the time, of course,” retorted Mrs. Bulfinch, snappishly. “Aren’t I telling you that’s why I didn’t taste it? I said so to George at the time, what’s more. Besides, if it wasn’t poison, it might be ‘snow’ or something. ‘Best not touch it,’ that’s what I said to George, and he said ‘Chuck it in the fire.’ But I wouldn’t have that. The gentleman might have come back for it. So I stuck it up on the shelf behind the bar, where they keep the spirits, and never thought of it again from that day to yesterday, when your policeman came round about it.”

  “It’s been looked for there,” said Parker, “but they can’t seem to find it anywhere.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. I put it there and I left the Rings in August, so what’s gone with it I can’t say. Daresay they threw it away when they were cleaning. Wait a bit, though—I’m wrong when I say I never thought about it again. I did just wonder about it when I read the report of the trial in the News of the World , and I said to George, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the gentleman who came into the Rings one night and seemed so poorly—just fancy!’ I said—just like that. And George said, ‘Now don’t you get fancies, Gracie my girl; you don’t want to get mixed up in a police case.’ George has always held his head high, you see.”

  “It’s a pity you didn’t come forward with this story,” said Parker, severely.

  “Well, how was I to know it was important? The taxi-driver had seen him a few minutes afterwards and he was ill then, so the powder couldn’t have had anything to do with it, if it was him, which I couldn’t swear to. And anyhow, I didn’t see about it till the trial was all over and finished with.”

  “There will be a new trial, though,” said Parker, “and you may have to give evidence at that.”

  “You know where to find me,” said Mrs. Bulfinch, with spirit. “I shan’t run away.”

  “We’re very much obliged to you for coming now,” added Wimsey, pleasantly.

  “Don’t mention it,” said the lady. “Is that all you want, Mr. Chief-Inspector?”

  “That’s all at present. If we find the packet, we may ask you to identify it. And, by the way, it’s advisable not to discuss these matters with your friends, Mrs. Bulfinch. Sometimes ladies get talking, and one thing leads to another, and in the end they remember incidents that never took place at all. You understand.”

  “I never was one for talking,” said Mrs. Bulfinch, offended. “And it’s my opinion, when it comes to putting two and two together to make five of ’em, the ladies aren’t in it with the gentlemen.”

  “I may pass this on to the solicitors for the defence, I suppose?” said Wimsey, when the witness had departed.

  “Of course,” said Parker, “that’s why I asked you to come and hear it—for what it’s worth. Meanwhile, we shall of course have a good hunt for the packet.”

  “Yes,” said Wimsey, thoughtfully, “yes—you will have to do that—naturally.”

  * * *

  Mr. Crofts did not look best pleased when this story was handed on to him.

  “I warned you, Lord Peter,” he said, “what might come of showing our hand to the police. Now they’ve got hold of this incident, they will have every opportunity to turn it to their own advantage. Why didn’t you leave it to us to make the investigation?”

  “Damn it,” said Wimsey angrily, “it was left to you for about three months and you did absolutely nothing. The police dug it up in three days. Time’s important in this case, you know.”

  “Very likely, but don’t you see that the police won’t rest now till they’ve found this precious packet?”

  “Well?”

  “Well, and suppose it isn’t arsenic at all? If you’d left it in our hands, we could have sprung the thing on them at the last moment, when it was too late to make enquiries, and then we should have knocked the bottom out of the prosecution. Give the jury Mrs. Bulfinch’s story as it stands and they’d have to admit there was some evidence that the deceased poisoned himself. But now, of course, the police will find or fake something and show that the powder was perfectly harmless.”

  “And supposing they find it and it is arsenic?”

  “In that case, of course,” said Mr. Crofts, “we shall get an acquittal. But do you believe in that possibility, my lord?”

  “It’s perfectly evident that you don’t,” said Wimsey, hotly. “In fact, you think your client’s guilty. Well, I don’t.”

  Mr. Crofts shrugged his shoulders.

  “In our client’s interests,” he said, “we are bound to look at the unfavourable side of all evidence, so as to anticipate the points that are likely to be made by the prosecution. I repeat, my lord, that you have acted indiscreetly.”

  “Look here,” said Wimsey, “I’m not out for a verdict of ‘Not Proven.’ As far as Miss Vane’s honour and happiness are concerned, she might as well be found guilty as acquitted on a mere element of doubt. I want to see her absolutely cleared and the blame fixed in the right quarter. I don’t want any shadow of doubt about it.”

  “Highly desirable, my lord,” agreed the solicitor, “but you will allow me to remind you that it is not merely a question of honour or happiness, but of saving Miss Vane’s neck from the gallows.”

  “And I say,” said Wimsey, “that it would be better for her to be hanged outright than to live and have everybody think her a murderess who got off by a fluke.”

  “Indeed?” said Mr. Crofts, “I fear that is not an attitude that the defence can very well adopt. May I ask if it is adopted by Miss Vane herself?”

&n
bsp; “I shouldn’t be surprised if it was,” said Wimsey. “But she’s innocent, and I’ll make you damn well believe it before I’ve done.”

  “Excellent, excellent,” said Mr. Crofts, suavely, “nobody will be more delighted than myself. But I repeat that, in my humble opinion, your lordship will be wiser not to betray too many confidences to Chief-Inspector Parker.”

  Wimsey was still simmering inwardly from this encounter when he entered Mr. Urquhart’s office in Bedford Row. The head-clerk remembered him and greeted him with the deference due to an exalted and expected visitor. He begged his lordship to take a seat for a moment, and vanished into an inner office.

  A woman typist, with a strong, ugly, rather masculine face, looked up from her machine as the door closed, and nodded abruptly to Lord Peter. Wimsey recognized her as one of the “Cattery,” and put a commendatory mental note against Miss Climpson’s name for quick and efficient organisation. No words passed, however, and in a few moments the head-clerk returned and begged Lord Peter to step inside.

  Norman Urquhart rose from his desk and held out a friendly hand of greeting. Wimsey had seen him at the trial, and noted his neat dress, thick, smooth dark hair and general appearance of brisk and business-like respectability. Seeing him now more closely, he noticed that he was rather older than he had appeared at a distance. He put him down as being somewhere about the middle forties. His skin was pale and curiously clear, except for a number of little freckles, like sunspots, rather unexpected at that time of the year, and in a man whose appearance conveyed no other suggestion of an outdoor life. The eyes, dark and shrewd, looked a little tired and were bistred about the orbits, as though anxiety were not unknown to them.

  The solicitor welcomed his guest in a light, pleasant voice and asked what he could do for him.

  Wimsey explained that he was interested in the Vane poisoning trial, and that he had the authority of Messrs. Crofts & Cooper to come and bother Mr. Urquhart with questions, adding, as usual, that he was afraid he was being a nuisance.